2 94 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



we may begin with visual and photographic observations with the tele- 

 scope. Such remarkable photographs as that of the Andromeda nebula 

 .seem to bring us into the very presence of a greater system, more nearly 

 comparable in size with the Milky Way than with the solar system, in 

 the actual process of formation. But on account of the long periods 

 of time, which must elapse before changes in this distant mass may 

 become sufficiently great to be appreciable, and for many other reasons, 

 jwe could not hope to base a complete scheme of stellar evolution on 

 .! such photographs alone. Our observational methods must also include 

 ;the means of solving physical, chemical and gravitational problems as 

 •they present themselves, not close at hand in the laboratory, but at 

 I inconceivably distant regions of space. For this reason it would have 

 \ been impossible prior to the invention of the spectroscope to arrange the 

 j stars according to any clearly defined system of development. The 

 ■ principal advances which have been made in the study of stellar evolu- 

 tion are therefore confined to the period which has elapsed since the 

 middle of the nineteenth century. 



Thus the investigation of stellar evolution has been contempora- 

 ■neous with the investigation of organic evolution. Indeed, the epoch- 

 making discovery of the. chemical composition of the sun by Kirchhoff 

 and Bunsen was made in the year of the publication of the 'Origin of 

 Species.' Before this discovery the meaning of spectral lines had been 

 as obscure as the meaning of Egyptian hieroglyphs prior to the dis- 

 covery of the Eosetta stone. After it the chemical analysis of a star 

 became hardly less difficult than the analysis of an unknown substance 

 , in the laboratory. Furthermore, it soon became apparent that the light 

 of a star, as decomposed by a prism, was competent to define the star's 

 position in a general scheme of development, in which every advance, 

 from the unformed nebulous cloud on through the highest degree of 

 stellar brilliancy to such a final stage as is typified by the moon, can 

 be defined with but little danger of error. Before we proceed to con- 

 sider some of the evidences of stellar evolution, let us examine some of 

 the instruments and methods without which the discoveries to be sub- 

 sequently described would have been impossible. 



I shall confine my remarks on modern astrophysical instru- 

 ments to those at present employed at the Yerkes Observatory, 

 partly because nearly all the celestial photographs reproduced in 

 the figures were taken with these instruments and partly be- 

 cause of the convenience of illustrating them. But before de- 

 scribing the great telescope which forms the principal apparatus 

 of the observatory, I wish to point out that many of the most 

 important results of astronomy, results which could not be obtained 

 with a powerful telescope for the very reason of its great power — have 

 been derived from the use of an ordinary camera, with just such a lens 



